Other stuff

Archive for November, 2005

Hello again. Apologies for the absence of anything of substance over the past week, but I quite enjoyed the notes to self and found it more aesthetically pleasing to leave them up front for a week. An anonymous reader (I’m assuming it’s regular and only correspondent, Mr Colgesso of Manchester) wrote to ask what they were all about. There existence was solely for my own amusement. This was mainly based on the repeated use of the word hermit. Not something that normally has me in stitches, but on this occasion produced a big enough grin during the first’s execution that I felt I should run with it. My hermitage can be questioned, as it has yet to begin. I imagine it will commence shortly after some sort of Perrin like episode, but time will tell.

I should also say sorry for the lack of any Collecting column this week. The first half of the weekend was fairly busy, so I’ve been doubly lazy today. Things will hopefully run to a more conventional course next week, so I’ll be able to knock one out then. Fnarr. Also as you’ve probably already noticed, I’m trying to whack five entries in to day, so as to purge the notes from the front page. If none of you have checked the archive since last Sunday, you might be interested to learn that I wrote one then, but then bumped it off with all the notes to self, so you can go read that if you’re that desperate. At least that’s what I planned to happen. Whether I was successful is unknown to me. I don’t look at this bloody page. Now onto the supposed fun bits.

I’m a man of few trousers, as many of you might know. Not in a flashing way, just that I don’t own many good pairs. My tendency towards hording means that a pair have to be in an incredible state of disrepair before I will part with them. Of the three good pairs, and thinking about it all of the bad pairs too, I only have this particular problem with one of them. For reasons that mystify me I find that I almost always forget to do up the fly on this one pair. I’ve found myself wandering around work on a number of occasions, zip undone without my knowledge. WITHOUT MY KNOWLEDGE. I refer you to my second sentence. In this entry that is, not the two months for indecent exposure. Punning aside, it’s left me wondering if people have noticed. No one’s said anything, but that’s all part of being English isn’t it. At least it hasn’t happened when I’ve gone commando . . .

Spotted an advert on telly the other day for what I presume is the latest classical supergroup, trying to cash in on the absence of new Three Tenors material. Some bunch of chancers calling themselves ‘Il Divo’. The second I saw the name, cogs started turning in my brain, until I realized the joy that this might well bring into the lives of many music emporium employees. You see, the market for this kind of thing is most likely to be your middle aged Classic FM listener. Nothing wrong with that, they like what they like and good luck to ‘em. The problem arises when they try to purchase the album. Being a middle aged Classic FM listener, the record shop is not a natural environment, most of their CDs having been bought in garages. So, helpless when confronted by the array of pop pap at front of shop, they will inevitably ask an assistant. But, and here’s the rub, as a middle aged Classic FM listener, they won’t recall the whole of the groups name. Perhaps they have some knowledge of foreign languages, so feel that the ‘Il’ is superfluous. So simply ask “Excuse me. Do you have anything by, err, Devo?” Hilarity ensues when they arrive home and find themselves listening to some weirdoes from the late seventies doing electro covers of Stones songs. I must ask someone at HMV how many Devo returns they get over the Christmas period. Well, it would interest me anyway.